Holiday Hoaxes Unwrapped: Fake Trees, Freebies, & Shopping Sprees

Online scams have surged in recent years, as our lives increasingly move online and scammers leverage new technologies in attempts to defraud greater numbers of people. Chief among them are shopping scams, which accounted for 42% of online scams reported worldwide in 2023, according to data insights firm Statista. In 2022, U.S. officials said online shopping scams cost over $70 million during the holiday season alone.

Through our ATLAS intelligence reporting, Graphika regularly detects, tracks, and helps disrupt a wide array of scams on multiple platforms. Working with industry partners at Meta, we are now joining a campaign to raise public awareness about online scams. This first report focuses on online shopping scams ahead of major holidays and e-commerce events in multiple countries.

Here we provide details of scams targeting shoppers and social media users during the November and December holiday season. Our findings are not exhaustive but rather a set of case studies illustrating how these types of scams attempt to engage, deceive, and defraud people of their money and sensitive personal information. We’ve selected the examples based on a combination of key attributes, including their relevance as online shopping scams, prevalence across internet platforms, and notable tactics, techniques, and procedures.